Considering the staggering results reported by Apple (NSDQ: AAPL) last night, this should come as little surprise: the company’s iPhone is back on top as the bestselling smartphone in the U.S. Android has managed to hold on to its position in the UK but there, too, Apple massively increased its…

CES, currently in full swing in Las Vegas, promises to bring out another wave of Android tablets, to add to the 40+ that were on the market before the week even started (if you don’t count e-readers built on the platform; if you do, it’s more like 50). Sound flooded?…

Smartphone penetration is slowly approaching the tipping point where it will be more common to have a smartphone than a feature phone among the general population. Ofcom says the UK and Japan are among the countries leading the way to that milestone as consumers turn away from PC usage—a trend…

Amazon’s Kindle Fire today is only on sale in the U.S., but according to one report that Fire could be spreading to the UK as soon as January of next year.

It’s taken a few years, but Amazon (NSDQ: AMZN) has really ramped up the number of countries where it is selling its Kindle products. Today it’s announcing two more countries to the list where it sells its keyboard-free Kindle e-reader, Spain and Italy, where it will sell for €99 ($133),…

As the Black Friday shopping opportunities continue to pile up, the mentions of mobile payment services get ever more frequent, too: in just the last two days, no less than four major mobile players have been linked with new initiatives around NFC technology, the wave-and-pay system that its supporters hope…

Telefonica (NYSE: TEF) has put its digital eggs into one basket—centralizing all its global digital operations into one new unit—and with today’s results it’s easy to see why: the company today released some dismal results for some of its legacy businesses—namely in its home market of Spain—which have resulted in…

Spanish newspaper La Vanguardia is launching an e-book publishing program, “E-books De Vanguardia.” It appears to be the first Spanish newspaper to do so, and the first books are free.

Vodafone (NYSE: VOD) and Orange have long been rivals in mobile phone markets in Europe, but as growth slows down in the region, the two are, at least in part, taking somewhat different paths in their search for fresh revenues: Vodafone is increasingly looking at its investments in emerging markets,…

Another development in the Apple (NSDQ: AAPL) versus Android patent story as the various cases work their way through the courts. Samsung has requested depositions for testimony from four key designers and inventors, including Apple’s SVP of industrial Jony Ive, as part of its defense the case that Apple has…

Apple (NSDQ: AAPL) has been going tooth and nail after big Android device makers, especially Samsung, accusing them in courts worldwide of lifting designs and other features from Apple products like the iPad and iPhone. But one case decided yesterday in Spain illuminated a couple of key facts: Apple’s been…

We have seen time and again how the growing number of Android-based handsets from a plethora of OEMs—and the popularity of some specific models, such as the Galaxy line from Samsung—is translating into a boom for the Android platform. But that growth is even more striking when you compare it…

Amazon (NSDQ: AMZN) definitely didn’t break out Kindle Fire pre-order numbers in the investor call following today’s earnings report, but CFO Tom Szkutak followed up on CEO Jeff Bezos’s earlier statement that “based on what we’re seeing with Kindle Fire pre-orders, we’re increasing capacity and building millions more than we’d…

Big U.S. publishers are now reporting that e-books now make up between 15 and 20 percent of their sales—a dramatic and quick rise since 2010. But in the rest of the world, it’s a very different story. In the UK, e-books make up about six percent of sales, but that’s…

Frustrating news for those in the UK who have eagerly been awaiting the first 4G services. The country, home to some of the most mobile-savvy consumers in the world, is now facing a delay well into 2012 before its national operators can even begin to consider how they would deploy…

Yesterday Google (NSDQ: GOOG) launched its first eBookstore outside of the U.S. in the UK, but it will have to step up the pace by quite a bit more if it hopes to catch up to Amazon’s footprint abroad. Today, Amazon (NSDQ: AMZN) launched the latest of its bookstores abroad,…

Google (NSDQ: GOOG) has worked its way into the center of the mobile industry with its Android OS, many mobile services and potentially even its own handsets when it buys Motorola (NYSE: MMI). Reports from Spain are suggesting that it now wants to also become mobile operator—although some claim that…

A look at some of the big stories in mobile today: » Google has started to quietly distribute its own SIM cards with Nexus S devices in Spain. Signs of an operator strategy ahead? (9to5Google)

Hola, Amazon: The company is officially launching in Spain today, as reported last week.